Shipping is the physical process of transporting goods and cargo. Virtually every product ever made, bought, or sold has been affected by shipping. Despite the many variables in shipped products and locations, there are only three basic types of shipments: land, air, and sea.
Land or ground shipping can be either by train or by truck. Trucking is easily the most popular form of shipping. Even with air and sea shipments, ground transportation is still required to take the product from its origin to the airport or seaport and then to its destination. Ground transportation is typically more affordable than air shipments, but more expensive than shipping by sea. Trucks are also much faster than ships and rail but slower than planes. Many trucks will take freight directly from the shipper to its destination in what is known as a door to door shipment. Vans and trucks of all sizes make deliveries to sea ports and air ports where freight is moved in bulk also.
Manufacturers of vehicles, such as ATVs and golf carts, need a way to economically ship finished units from their factories to distributors and dealers throughout the country and oversees. Shipping these vehicles throughout the country can be done with semi-trailers. A semi-trailer is a trailer without a front axle. A large proportion of its weight is supported either by a road tractor or by a detachable front axle assembly known as a dolly or by the tail of another trailer. A semi-trailer is normally equipped with legs which can be lowered to support it when it is uncoupled. A road tractor coupled to a semi-trailer is often called a semi-trailer truck or semi. Though most road trailers meet this definition, the term is most often applied to heavy trailers appropriate for use in such a rig.
A typical trailer for an 18-wheel semi-tractor trailer is 8 ft. 6 in. wide, 53 ft. long and from floor to ceiling is about 9 ft. 2 in. in height. In shipping ATVs without crating, they can be placed two abreast in a semi-trailer and, given the length of the ATVs, however, only a limited number can be loaded onto the floor of the semi-trailer. If ATVs could be stacked two high within the semi-trailer, the hauling capacity can be doubled.
While it is recognized a semi-trailer could be especially constructed with an intermediate deck between the floor and ceiling of the semi-trailer, this application would be limited to being used on box trailers and not to curtain siders (a curtain sider is similar to a box trailer except the sides are movable curtains made of reinforced fabric coated with a waterproof coating). Thus only half of a curtain side semi-trailer can be used when transporting vehicles. Further, intermodal freight containers have no catch mechanisms mounted to the side of the containers for mounting an intermediate deck between the floor and the ceiling.
When shipping vehicles such as ATVs and golf carts, the vehicles are often crated up and placed in containers made of wood. However, the utilization of crates becomes problematic when shipping vehicles overseas. Due to the International Plant Protection Convention (abbreviated IPPC), most crates shipped across national borders must be made of materials are incapable of being a carrier of invasive species of insects and plant diseases. The standards for these pallets are specified in ISPM 15.
Crates made of raw, untreated wood are not compliant with ISPM 15. To be compliant the crates must be treated by either of the following under the supervision of an approved agency. (1) Heat treatment: The wood must be heated to achieve a minimum core temperature of 56° C. for at least 30 minutes. Crates treated via this method bear the initials HT near the IPPC logo. (2) Chemical fumigation: The wood must be fumigated with methyl bromide. Crates treated via this method bear the initials MB near the IPPC logo. Making creates IPPC compliant can be very expensive and purchasing these crates to ship commodities can be very expensive. Crates made of non-wood materials such as steel, aluminum, plastic, or engineered wood products, such as plywood, oriented strand board, or cardboard do not need IPPC approval. However, these crates are equally expensive.
Further, crates can take up a lot of space in the container used to ship commodities overseas. Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using standard ISO containers (known as shipping containers or isotainers) loaded and sealed intact onto container ships, railroad cars, planes, and trucks. Containers have similar dimensions to the tractor trailer discussed above.
It would be desirable to provide a decking system readily installed and taken down by a single workman and which is relatively compact, allowing storage at the front of a trailer or container when not in use. It would be further desirable to eliminate the need for crates to ship vehicles such as ATVs and golf carts. It would be desirable to reduce the cost of shipping vehicles such as ATVs and golf carts. It would be desirable to eliminate the need to comply with regulations surrounding the use of crates in shipping materials.